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When I joined the WGAE’s Committee for an Informed Membership (CIM) last year, I was surprised by how much “informing” I myself needed.  The WGAE is not the same guild it was even two years ago.  Two trends, media consolidation and new technologies for delivering media, have changed our industry so profoundly that virtually none of the old rules apply.

We are approaching an MBA negotiation in which, arguably, more is at stake for writers than every before.  To be apathetic or inactive now risks crippling writers for generations to come.  I joined this slate of writers running for Council seats—John Auerbach, Walter Bernstein, David Steven Cohen, Andy Meppen, Marianne Pryor, Bob Schneider, and Michael Winship--because they share with me certain key concerns that last year’s slate of candidates has made great strides in addressing. 

Getting our writers a share of new technologies is paramount.  Our current contracts only cover traditional media.  But soon everything we’ve ever written and everything we will write will be a mouse-click away.   It’s imperative that we claim our fair share of emerging technologies, while taking great care that the deals we make take into account that today’s “new media” is tomorrow’s vhs.  Our business is changing too fast for us to set any terms in stone. 

Before joining a guild committee, I understood the word “organizing” to mean preparing for a strike.  Quite to the contrary, organizing is our greatest hope for avoiding a strike.   Organizing means strengthening our guild—increasing our numbers and forging strategic partnerships with other entertainment unions—so that we negotiate with corporate Goliaths from a position of strength.  That’s another commitment I intend to further.

One of the CIM committee’s major undertakings this past year was a redesign of the WGAE website.   I know that “redesign” sounds cosmetic as guild priorities go, but I truly believe that our membership has been hobbled by a dearth of information, and our website is our best hope to reverse the problem.  We will launch a new site in the fall that’s easier to navigate and features up-to-the-moment information.   I am currently collaborating on a glossary of guild terminology that we hope will demystify some of the changes rocking our industry and answer questions like these: What is a mobisode?  When a corporation is double-breasted or vertically integrated, what does it mean to us as writers?

“Knowledge is power.”  “There’s strength in numbers.”  For writers, clichés are the enemy, but these bear keeping in mind as we move forward.   To grow our guild and treat all writers fairly, we must open our minds and our membership to writers not currently covered by the guild (basic cable, animation, reality programming, new technologies).  At the same time, we must remain solidly committed to the needs of our staff newswriters.   I love the WGAE because it serves such a diverse group of writers, but I sometimes think we’re at our best when we ignore what makes us different and regard each other as, simply, writers.  Our needs are the same even though our contracts differ.

When I was a graduate playwriting student, my teacher and mentor, Paula Vogel, told my class that “the circle rises together.”  If one of us—a writer with no name recognition and a strange, dark script--got a production, it was cause for the rest of us to celebrate, not seethe with envy.  My classmates’ success would pave the way for me.  Conversely, their failures would make my path harder.

That lesson, at the risk of lapsing into schmaltz, is why I kept getting up at dawn to stand on a dusty road in East Hampton during the guild’s (successful!) strike action against “It’s a Big, Big World.”   When children’s television writers at PBS or newswriters at CBS find their jobs imperiled, I feel threatened as well.  Their problems today are my problems tomorrow. 

I’m excited at the prospect of serving on the Council at such a crucial time, and I am not naïve as to what that service entails.  I hope you will vote for me and the entire WGAEmpowered slate, and give us the opportunity to serve you.

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Gina Gionfriddo is a television writer and playwright.  She is currently a staff writer for Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and has previously written for CBS’ Cold Case.  She is an active member of the WGAE’s Committee for an Informed Membership.

For her theatre work, Gina has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Obie, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.  Her critically acclaimed black comedy, After Ashley, had its New York premiere last year and was named one of 2005’s ten best stage shows by Entertainment Weekly.   The play has received regional productions in Louisville; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Denver; and Boston and is being translated for productions in Germany and Poland.  

A native of Washington, D.C., Gina graduated from Barnard College and Brown University’s MFA Playwriting Program, and has taught at Brown University and Providence College.